


Team Magic

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Infinity War Fix It [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Asgardian Magic (Marvel), Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 16:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: Time to bring chaos to order.





	Team Magic

The heaviness in her chest and the deep melancholy in her bones was possibly all that she had deserved. The space around her was gray and empty, like sitting in an interminable fog the color of ash. She remembered sitting on the ground in Wakanda, heart shattered, not even caring that her entire body was flaking away as she was wished out of existence.

Wanda had killed Vision at his request, then had to watch him be put back together and killed again. It had been torture doing it the first time, a harrowing to watch him scream in pain. That had hurt worse than feeling her twin brother's death, because at least Pietro had died in a heroic manner, even if it was senseless, and she had already done her best to give Vision peace as she took him apart. Thanos hadn't cared, had simply reached down and wrenched the stone out of him. It had been pain, so much pain, and Wanda had felt every moment of it as if it had been her own.

_I only feel you._

She was crying in this wasteland, this afterlife of sorts. Perhaps this was the Christian Hell. Or Gehenna. She'd certainly sinned enough in her lifetime, and all the losses she'd suffered apparently wasn't payment enough for her crimes.

Somehow, she wasn't dressed in the last thing she was wearing, which is what Wanda assumed would happen if she actually went to some kind of an afterlife. She was in her Scarlet Witch uniform, the red corset top and jacket, the trousers and boots. Her nails were perfectly polished in the deep wine color that almost looked black, and she had on all of the jewelry that she usually wore. She could feel the slide of lipstick on her lips when she pressed them together, and somehow knew already that her eyes were ringed with kohl and the smoky eye shadow colors she liked. Her tears didn't make the makeup run, and her sprawled seated position didn't seem to ruin the clothes or boots.

She'd never thought this kind of purgatory would care about such things. Then again, there was a lot she didn't know about death and would have to figure out as she went, much like with her magic itself.

As she thought of it, the red energy curled around her fingers like a flame. It was somewhat comforting, somewhat painful to see. The heaviness in her chest didn't ease at all.

"What am I doing here?" she asked aloud, not knowing if something would even happen in response.

There was the sound of footfalls in the distance, and she wondered briefly if she should try to run. It was impossible to tell what direction they were coming from, and the heaviness in her chest meant she wasn't even sure if she should try to.

Once she could make out figures coming out of the fog, Wanda got to her feet. She could at least face her second death head on.

The figures resolved into two men. One was tall and thin, with knife-sharp features and long black hair. He was dressed simply in black and forest green, feet bare and making him seem oddly endearing. He carried himself with the air of the walking wounded, though she couldn't see any indication of anything that could cause him that kind of pain. His companion was also tall, but appeared older. He had gray in his facial hair, and his expression was one of laser focus. He was dressed in dark slacks and a crisp white button down shirt, buffed and shiny dress shoes on his feet. The contrast between their clothing was striking, but they walked with the same kind of weariness. Both were strangers, but she didn't feel threatened at all.

"You're the chaos mage?" the younger looking one asked. He had a regal accent, simple curiosity in his tone.

Wanda raised her hand and let her magic curl and twine around her fingers like smoke. She twisted her fingers and let her gaze fall to the red swirls of power there. "If that's what this is."

The older looking one nodded as she looked up at them. "That's definitely chaos magic. It's difficult to control for most students of the mystic arts."

Bitter laughter bubbled up out of her in spite of her efforts to stay silent in front of them. "Difficult? I leapt at the chance to be experimented on by fucking Nazis in Hydra's clothing because I thought I could get vengeance. It changed me in ways I didn't expect and only cost me everything I ever knew about myself." The red power brightened, tendrils turning into thick, snaking coils. "Practice doesn't make perfect, gentlemen, practice just increases the danger."

The younger looking man grinned. "Oh, yes," he purred, looking pleased by her pronouncement. "That's exactly what we need, then." He nodded his head at her. "I am Loki of Asgard."

"Asgard? I've heard stories of Thor. And the Loki I heard of was an enemy of Asgard."

He visibly paused and let out a breath. "It's complicated."

"I'm Doctor Strange," the other man introduced himself. "I studied the mystic arts under the Ancient One at Kamar-Taj."

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

"We're strong in our different disciplines," Strange said with a shrug. "But there is the thought of creating a new dimension of sorts, a plane of existence that Thanos can't threaten."

"Or at least one where it's easier to destroy him," Loki said brightly. "I'd rather like to return the favor," he added, rubbing at his throat. "I'm not fond of dying."

"So we're all dead," Wanda said, letting the magic bleed out of her.

"Unfortunately," Strange said with a nod. "But there's a way to fix that with magic."

"Not everyone can be saved with magic," she choked, thinking of Vision exploding and her brother falling under a hail of bullets. "Maybe we shouldn't be saved, either."

"I don't think you believe that," Strange said with surprising gentleness as he stepped forward.

"I for one think I should be saved," Loki huffed, crossing his arms. "I actually sacrificed quite a bit in the end, there, and I don't want to think it was for nothing."

He shot the two an annoyed look when they stared at him in shock and shrugged. "What? I'm just saying what we're all thinking."

Wanda rolled her eyes at him. "Speak for yourself."

"We've handled the power of different Infinity Stones," Strange said, cutting off Loki's reply and ignoring his irritated expression. "I held Time, he held Space. One of the Norns said you were in contact with Mind." At her slow, pained nod, Strange gave her a sympathetic grimace of a smile. "His mother, Frigga, apparently knows powerful fate magic, and was once in contact with the Power Stone. We should be able to harness that experience to create a new dimension, one that has as much solidity as the one we had all come from."

"Though really, it would be better if you could fuse the two together," Loki said, just a thread of a snide tone to his voice. "Chaos magic means that you could do that. We're in the realm of the Norns. The ones that control fate," he explained in the face of Wanda's blank look. "They create lives and worlds and entire realities, and are angry that Thanos destroyed their work without their permission. Between us, we can create a dimension for us to live again, and the Norns would be able to place us there."

"For what price?" Wanda choked. "Magic has limits and rules and there is always a price to pay, always."

"I'd be willing to pay it for the chance to live again," Loki said, arms dropping to his sides. His gaze was intense as he stared at her. "Wouldn't you?"

"Didn't you hear me?" she cried, tears forming in her eyes. "I've lost too much! I didn't even want to be _here_ when I disappeared. I'd rather not exist!"

"But we can fix that," Strange said gently. "We can bargain with the Norns." His lips twisted in a wry smile. "I'm rather good at striking bargains with extradimensional beings."

There was a deprecating joke there that Wanda didn't understand. "I'm tired of paying the price for magic because everyone else is afraid of it."

"Do we look afraid of you?" Loki scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You need to spend more time with those skilled in the magical arts. Mortals are so dull." At Strange's throat clearing, he made a vague, dismissive gesture. "Most mortals, then. You're just irritating."

It reminded her of how she used to be with Pietro, so she couldn't help but smother a laugh with her hand. At Loki's surly expression, she laughed out loud. "All right. I'll go with you. I wasn't doing anything but grieving anyway."

"Trust me," Loki intoned darkly. "There's always time for that."

***

Wanda felt immediate comfort and recognition with Frigga, even though she had never met the woman before. It was odd and disconcerting, but reminded her of when she had met Vision when he was _Vision,_ not just a repository of Ultron's dreams. The connection there had been immediate, something that had resonated with her soul on a level she'd never experienced before. Maybe it was only because of the Mind Stone, but she had thought it was more than that. The two had wanted to share ideas and hopes and dreams, had known what it was like to be seen as different from the ordinary yet still yearn to understand it. She had loved his sense of wonder, the desire to explore and learn and experience. It mirrored her own, and she had felt safe and comforted when with him. Whole, perhaps, though she wasn't missing anything when he was gone.

_I only see you._

Frigga gave her a soft smile, one that she remembered her mother giving her when they celebrated the high holy days, remembering their dead. "Hello."

She inclined her head a bit. "They say you know how things should be."

"Of a sort." She sat on a gnarled bit of tree root sticking up out of the ground, and Wanda sat on one across from her. "We call it the the _ørlǫg_ of the _wyrd,"_ she began. "The laws of fate, I suppose is a good enough translation as any. With the magic regarding that fate being called the _spá,_ and my son's specialty with illusions and manipulation magic being called _seiðr._ There is also _galdr_ and rune magic, but those are well enough to start with." Her eyes twinkled. "I think your chaos magic is something like a combination between the _spá_ and _seiðr."_

"Which means what?" she asked, not sure where Frigga was going with this train of thought.

"We are standing in the nexus of all dimensions," Frigga murmured, gesturing around her. Wanda was transfixed by the amber and emerald earrings swinging with her movement, how flawlessly elegant she seemed to be. Frigga next pointed up at the tree they were sitting beside, and Wanda looked up at it. It was worse for wear, with broken branches that appeared ripped off, twigs snapped in half and dangling down, some looking as though they were rotting off the trunk. "This is the representation of Yggdrasil. The connection between the Nine Realms. Of course there are more, but those were nine we easily connected through the World Tree eons ago."

"Why?"

"Haven't you ever wanted to travel to different places, experience new things, see everything there was to see? Take joy in learning just because it was something you hadn't already known?"

"Yes," she murmured, looking back down at Frigga. An aching pain lanced through her, memories of Vision, of his voice, of how awkward and tender his touch had been, their first kiss, the time he had held onto her with shock and joy and utter love when he realized he could be a whole man for her, not just a facsimile.

_I see only you._

The memory brought her to tears, and Frigga reached across the space between them to clasp her hands. "It was about love and family," Frigga said. "At least, that's the way I think of it."

"I'm sorry, it's..."

"Your pain is too fresh," Frigga said, giving her hands a squeeze. "I've been dead a few years, it doesn't hurt me quite so badly." She looked over at Loki, who was sitting cross legged near the well, frowning at the cat's cradle of silvery threads between his fingers. Strange was standing nearby, looking on in fascination at the slight weaving that Loki was doing. "Theirs is, too, not that they would say such a thing. They would never want to be thought of as broken."

"You're not afraid of that?"

Frigga's laugh was pained and sad. "It doesn't really matter, does it? We've all lost things here. Every single one of us. Even the Norns, in all their wisdom, lost the future they so carefully built."

"They were saying something about that."

"I can read it, the pattern they had initially woven," Frigga murmured. "My husband Odin, the Allfather before Thor, even he couldn't read it as well as I could," she admitted with a wry twist of her lips. "Not that he appreciated that bit of knowledge. But it was my concern, my gift to nurture and pass on as I saw fit."

"You taught Loki," Wanda guessed, seeing the way Frigga fondly looked at her son.

"Despite his lack of patience, yes," she replied. She turned to face Wanda with that same soft smile on her face. "I would like to say that there is time enough for all things, but we know it's not exactly true. Time doesn't flow in the same sense as it did in the dimension we had left."

"They were saying they want to make a new dimension."

"Yes. In this nexus of all realities, we can make a new world."

Wanda sighed. "But if I can't? Or don't want to? What good is having a world without Vis?"

Frigga reached up toward the tree and drew down a slender thread. "He has a life line," she began slowly, drawing her fingers apart. "It's grown thin here, but it hasn't entirely disrupted."

"But he's dead. I destroyed him, then Thanos rewound time to do it again." She choked and covered her face with her hands, seeing it all play out in front of her. "I can't... Don't do this to me."

"He exists, yet doesn't." Her voice was kind and patient, and Wanda dimly remembered her mother sounding like that. Didn't they call her the All-Mother?

"What do you mean?" Wanda sniffled, wiping at her eyes. Strangely enough, her fingers didn't come away streaked with eye makeup.

"Your friends were working to save his life," Frigga reminded her. "They made a copy."

Hope surged in her chest, and she had to force it down. She literally covered her mouth with both hands, feeling the cold press of her rings against her skin.

"We are copies as well," Frigga murmured, pulling down other threads from the tree. Faster than Wanda could even track, she began twisting and weaving them together without a loom, a blur of silver between her moving hands. "We are here because the Norns will it, because this eventuality happened even though they had worked hard at preventing it."

The heavy press in her chest still made her feel weighed down and in pain. Her magic curled around her in response, almost like a living thing, a piece of red fog that was almost like a shield. Frigga looked up, approval in her eyes.

"You can change things, Wanda," she said softly. "That's the nature of chaos magic. My gifts are those of the _spá_ especially, and it's a measure of order. It's structured. There are rules to it, all of which I must follow. Even illusions work under a set of rules, for all that my wayward son would like to discount that claim. I can weave according to the rules, but I cannot break them."

"All I've ever done is change things." At Frigga's gentle questioning look, Wanda sighed. "My parents were Roma. Persecuted all across Europe. We are Jewish, so we are persecuted for that. I am a twin, and I was never originally meant to be. Bombs in Sokovia were supposed to kill us all, but we waited for three days and it never went off. I was expecting to die in experiments but never did. Instead I have this," she said, lifting her hand. Thick coils of her magic twined around her fingers, vivid and bloodred. "And no one ever seems to know what to make of me."

"World Shaper," Frigga murmured, the corners of her mouth ticking up in the corners. "People always talk about bringing order out of chaos, but it's that chaos that allows life to begin and grow. It's chance and change that brings about growth. You don't learn anything if you're not challenged. So you are all about change, and you grow in unexpected ways. You can use what you know and draw from what I know."

"How do I just build a world?" Wanda asked, lip curling. "It's not so easy as putting a puzzle together."

Frigga moved her hands apart, and a dizzying array of threads were between them, a three dimensional loom with a pattern that Wanda couldn't describe as anything but beautiful even though she didn't understand the shape of what she was looking at. Swirls and spirals, knots and whorls, a soft glow along the silver strands as if they pulsed and breathed.

"A fraction of the lives caught here in the wake of Thanos' destruction. Loki carries the lives left from Asgard, keeping them safe through the ravages of space. I am replacing the pieces of the pattern that Thanos had torn apart at behest of the Norns." Her fingers began to fly again, expanding on the fabric of lives that she held. "You will work with Time and Space and give these lives a home."

"I don't know _how!"_ Wanda cried in frustration.

The red magic flew out of her in a concussive wave, but Frigga remained seated and smiling. Red glittered among the silver strands between her fingers. Loki managed not to fall over, but Strange toppled when the wave hit him. Loki didn't lose sight of the strands he was working on, and rushed to his mother's side. "Mother!" he called in agitation. "What happened?"

Frigga wasn't perturbed at all. If anything, her eyes were alight with pleasure. "The beginning of the great crafting, Loki," she said, grinning widely. The strands pulsed with silver and red, and she spread her hands wide to show them. "You will give them Space. He will give them Time," she said as Strange approached them cautiously. She looked up and locked her eyes with Wanda's stunned gaze. "You will give them Mind. My Power will make it happen."

"But we don't have the Reality or Soul Stones," Loki cried, looking up from the strands he held, a stricken expression on his face. "It won't ever work!"

"Of course it will," she said calmly, still grinning. "Because we have chaos to wreck the order that Thanos had created. It will stir things up, cause all kinds of growth and change."

Her smile had an almost sinister edge to it, making both Wanda and Loki lean back, away from her. "I can't wait to see what happens next."


End file.
